Saturday, July 18, 2009

BBC Earth TwitterNews July 18, 2009

In High Schools, Science is often taught as something that happened then. The fact is that science is something that is happening now. Below is an example of what a daily or weekly Science A4 might look like. It could be delivered as a standalone. Or it could be the sidebar for a student newspaper, a clickable newspaper.

Unlike a textbook, it could be delivered fresh every day or every week. When students get fresh food for thought, it's much more likely that they will think. If CodeZ QR is embedded, it gives the teacher/mentor information about which student is looking, when and where. That information can be shared with parents and other teachers. As that body of information is analyzed, it will make it practical for the teacher to use it to plan appropriate interventions.

13 comments:

This is a genius idea. One that makes the schooling system more strict and nosey!

This idea will not help kids want to cooperate with helping teachers with the class or with helping the education system in general. In the short run this is a good way to know how much kids are working so help can be admitted. On the other hand kids will not be pleased with the idea.

True but aren't we trying to find the root of the problem to why kids find it difficult to learn? There must be a way to get kids to fully learn for seven hours a day five days a week every year. If a new curriculum has to be induced then so be it.

You say "There must be a way to get kids to fully learn for seven hours a day five days a week every year." I'm not sure that's true. I can't imagine focusing on anything for 7 hrs x 5 days every week.

On the other hand, everybody can learn something new all the time, just while they are moving through their day.

Maybe a good place to start is to figure out what exactly we mean by "learning." http://tinyurl.com/l74ls8

It's like being great at anything. Practice makes perfect. The more you practice the better you get. The better you get the more fun it is. The more fun it is the more you practice. And then you go back to "the more you practice, the better . . ."

Many kids never practice until they are perfect and that Michael is the problem schools are having these days. The problem is that kids are reluctant to learn because of the lack of practice and the fact that school gets harder as it goes on. On the other side of the story many kids do practice and just never get it perfect because of the lack of will power and effort put into their work.

Very good point. The only thing is that nobody ever gets to be perfect. Even great doctors "practice" medicine. And great performers are always worried and stressed before every performance. If they were "perfect" that wouldn't happen.

But your main point makes alot of sense. So what are your thoughts about why some kids who don't practice at school practice alot out of school.

Well those who do not practice in school generally have obvious concentration problems. Being around your friends in a class with a weird and very lenient teacher makes you just want to turn around and talk to the kid behind you. Once that happens every lesson its all good because you get to talk to your friend and all the kids think you're "cool." Everything is good except one thing: You go home having learned nothing. So when you get home you cram 7 hours of teaching into three hours. Hard but to some very worth it.